From Wikileaks, more vital evidence of a US government running amok with malpractice. This time the revelation is that US Embassy in Paris is community-organizing the French umma. The cable, signed by US Ambassador Rivkin, is breathtaking in relating its invasive and patronizing plan -- a Minority Engagement Strategy for France, which, last time I checked, was still a functioning Western democratic republic.

Not good enough. Apparently, the United States must, and I quote, "help France realize its own egalitarian goals." Oh, and guess what measures of success include? "Growth in the number of constructive efforts by minority leaders to organize political support both within and beyond their own minority communities," and a "decrease in popular support for xenophobic political parties and platforms." ...

I almost forgot how the Pundit Right smacked down Glenn Beck over his wholly rational concern that out of Tahrir Square a new caliphate might arise in the Islamic world until I read William Kristol's op-ed this week.

Earlier this month, Weekly Standard editor and Fox analyst Kristol had led off the anti-Beck attack with a heated column accusing Beck of "hysteria" for his "rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East" and connections to the American Left. Kristol was seconded by National Review editor Rich Lowry. The New York Times' David Brooks entered the debate lambasting Beck for his "delusional ravings about the caliphate coming back" while "the conservative establishment" saw Mubarak's fall as "a fulfillment of Ronald Reagan's democracy dream." (Count me out.)

For the next week or so, taunting "delusional" Beck became a regular feature on cable TV. The Pundit Left congratulated the responsible Right for "addressing" the Beck "problem." And maybe a solution...

Egyptian armed forces this week demolished fences surrounding ancient Coptic monasteries, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by armed Arabs, robbers and escaped prisoners, who have seized the opportunity of the state of diminished protection by the authorities in Egypt to carry out assaults and thefts.

"Three monasteries have been attacked by outlaws and have asked for protection from the armed forces, but were told to defend themselves." said activist Mark Ebeid. "When the terrified monks built fences to protect themselves, armed forces appeared only then with bulldozers to demolish the fences. It is worth noting that these monasteries are among the most ancient in Egypt, with valuable Coptic icons and manuscripts among others, which are of tremendous value to collectors."

On Sunday February 20, armed forced stormed the 4th century old monastery of St. Boula in the Red Sea area (picture above), assaulted three monks and then demolished a small fence supporting a gate leading to the fenceless monastery. "The idea of the erection of the gate was prompted after being attacked at midnight on February 13 by five prisoners who broke out from their prisons," said Father Botros Anba Boula, "and were armed with a pistol and batons. The monks ran after them but they fled to the surrounding mountains except for one who stumbled and was apprehended and held by the monks until the police picked him up three days later."

When I first went to Iraq in October 2003 to command a U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF) that had been tailored down to a relatively small size in the months following the initial invasion, we found a growing threat from multiple sources -- but particularly from al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). We began a review of our enemy, and of ourselves. Neither was easy to understand.

Cosmic or on the level? McChrystal continues:

Like all too many military forces in history, we initially saw our enemy as we viewed ourselves.

And then what? Did the light dawneth? Does McChrystal now see that the ideologically-driven, enemy-influence-operation-ensured elimination of Islam and its teachings from policy- and strategy-making has been an unmitigated disaster for the United States?

Geert Wilders has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal this week discussing the legal box the European Union has put free speech into with its provisions against "racism and xenophobia" so broad that any statement an individual might possibly interpret as "insulting" to his group -- fact, knowledge, context be damned -- is against the law. Wilders writes: "The perverse result is that in Europe it is now all but impossible to have a debate about the nature of Islam, or about the effects of immigration of Islam's adherents."

All according to plan -- the Organization of the Islamic Conference's Ten-Year Plan.

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome to the Caliphate.

"European Free Speech Under Attack"

by Geert Wilders

"The lights are going out all over Europe," British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey famously remarked on the eve of World War I. I am reminded...

From the American Thinker, Andrew Bostom's brilliant analysis not just of the blood-chilling implications of Qaradawi's Friday sermon in Tahrir Square, but the even more blood-chilling collusion, conscious and not, of world media to prevent us from learning them:

"Qaradawi and the Treason of the Intellectuals"

by Andrew Bostom

Last Friday (2/18/11) marked the triumphal return to Cairo of Muslim Brotherhood "Spiritual Guide" Yusuf al-Qaradawi. After years of exile, his public re-emergence in Egypt was sanctioned by the nation's provisional military rulers. Qaradawi's own words were accompanied by images and actions during his appearance which should have shattered the delusive view that the turmoil leading to President Mubarak's resignation augured the emergence of a modern, democratic Egyptian society devoted to Western conceptions...

France and five other south-lying EU members have said the Union should give less money to its post-Soviet neighbours and more to Mediterranean rim countries in the context of the Arab uprisings.

Notice the sand hasn't settled and the EU's reaction is proclaim a withdrawal of aid from "its post-Soviet neighbors" -- translation: kindred European neighbors with intermingled history and religion -- to redirect it to the umma. Don't-hit-me money?

Writing at Big Peace, Ned May sums up the corruption of the Sharia Republic of Austria as inflicted on our friend Elisabeth, convicted for telling the truth about Islam:

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted for stating the plain facts: the prophet Mohammed had sex with a nine-year-old-girl. She never used the word pedophilia; she simply described in everyday language the prophet’s… ahem… tastes.

The statements she made are not considered false by observant Muslims. They are written down in Islamic scripture, and are considered correct and authoritative by virtually every Islamic scholar and theologian.

These scriptural passages are not considered offensive to Muslims when they are recited in a mosque or a madrassa. Mohammed was the perfect man, so by definition his actions cannot be offensive. They are in fact exemplary. That is why Muslim men continue to marry little girls to this day.

Elisabeth’s statements are offensive because they were made by a non-Muslim in public, and brought discredit upon Islam in the eyes of other non-believers.

Why CBS kept mum for four days about the brutal sexual assault of network correspondent Lara Logan by a Tahrir Square mob on Feb. 11 we just don't know.

Did Logan, flown out of Cairo by a network-chartered jet to a U.S. hospital hours after the attack, request secrecy as a brutalized victim?

Were news executives, or even Logan herself, concerned that the bombshell news of the assault, which took place almost exactly as Hosni Mubarak was relinquishing all powers, would detract from the "jubilant" crowd's "democracy" drama? Such a news blackout is hard to imagine if, for example, a star correspondent had been similarly violated by a mob of tea party-goers at, say, a massive Glenn Beck rally -- and particularly if other correspondents had previously suffered unprecedented assaults and threats from the same crowd. A keening outcry would have arisen from the heart of the MSM (mainstream media) against the mob, accompanied by a natural zeal to investigate...

"With sermons, Afghan clerics wade into politics," reads the jump-page headline on this excellent reporting through a prism of goofiness, courtesy the Washington Post. Hasn't anyone over at Post figured out that in Islam religion is politics, and vice versa?

KABUL - For the U.S. government, and for the 100,000 American troops fighting in Afghanistan, the messages delivered last Friday could hardly have been worse.

Under the weathered blue dome of Kabul's largest mosque, a distinguished preacher, Enayatullah Balegh, pledged support for "any plan that can defeat" foreign military forces in Afghanistan, denouncing what he called "the political power of these children of Jews."

Caroline Glick wrote a column this month to explain what she calls "Israeli indifference to democratic currents in Arab societies" -- an apparent paradox, it seems, to American naifs who believe that a functioning ballot box is all a society needs to join the fraternity of enlightened nations where individual rights are protected in the enshrinement of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the blessed like. But what if there are masses who want, yearn and are animated by something entirely different, something antithetical to life as we know it, liberty as we enjoy it, and the pursuit of happiness in accordance with individual desire?

Glick writes:

The fact is that Israeli indifference to democratic currents in Arab societies is not due to provincialism. Israelis are indifferent because we realize that whether under authoritarian rule or democracy, anti-Semitism is...

Our men rot in military prison; their enemies come out in "detainee release shuras." More than 350 Taliban war prisoners have been released since this particular "reintegration" program began in January 2010.

He's in -- on a sentence far longer than any of his now-free co-defendants -- he's out; he's free, gets his life and family back together. Now, as of this week, Sgt. Hutchins is going back to military prison.

Once again, we are long past the point where an American Marine's supposed debt to (Iraqi terrorist) society has become cruel and unusual punishment.

Meanwhile, also this week, CENTCOM gushingly announced the scheduled release of 11 "empowered detainees" on top of the more than 350 Afghan war prisoners released since January 2010.

And what makes these detainees (never "prisoners") "empowered"? CENTCOM says it's due to the educational courses offered at Parwan Detention Facility. Officials call it "civics," and maybe...

Haven't read Rumsfeld's book, but I did read a rebuttal by Dan Senor and Roman Martinez in the Wash Post this week in which they argue over what went wrong in Iraq. Rummy says it was poor planning in a too-long CPA-led aftermath; they say it was Rummy's failure to send enough troops. They further contend that Rumsfeld supported the CPA's policy at the time, citing internal docs to prove it.

But this whole argument seems completely beside the point, whizzing right by anything meaningful or significant about the disastrous policy the Bush administration executed in Iraq. I refer to the cocoon of ignorance about Islam that our government and military were (and are) operating from in attempting to nation-build our way out of the umma, first in Iraq and now Afghanistan.

But there's something else to note in the Senor-Martinez piece. The rebuttal crescendos here:

Rumsfeld now argues that a speedy handover to a sovereign Iraqi government would have prevented the (largely Sunni) insurgency...

Been following the Raymond Davis story since it broke. It was obvious it would get ugly. But now, it takes a turn for the woeful and very dangerous.

AP reports:

LAHORE, Pakistan – U.S. Sen. John Kerry promised the Pakistani people Tuesday that a jailed U.S. embassy worker will be subjected to a U.S. criminal investigation if he is released by the Pakistani government.

Kerry also expressed regret for the deaths of two Pakistani men in an apparent attempt to smooth over relations with the important ally in the war against extremists and al-Qaeda while still insisting that the American needs to be released.

Why don't our important allies ever attempt to smooth over relations with us?

Solzhenitsyn once said, "When people renounce lies, they simply cease to exist. Like parasite, they can only survive when attached to a person." But what happens when the lies, the parasites, become the protective armor of such people?

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Western governments have known about the criminal activities of senior politicians in Kosovo for a long time, Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty has said, adding that Europe is now unwilling to properly investigate the situation for fear of being exposed.

As liars and thus collaborators.

"Western countries knew all the time what was happening in Kosovo but nobody did anything about it," Mr Marty said in an interview with the Slovenian daily Delo on Saturday...

Over at Ruthfully Yours, Ruth King sums up the all-important and distressing implications of the "Trojan" Brotherhood at C-PAC:

The really disturbing news about CPAC and the ACU is not about crackpot Ron Paul winning in a straw poll or Donald Trump throwing his hair into the race.

It is the fact that Suhail Khan breezed through the proceedings and only David Horowitz denounced the Moslem Brotherhood and conference participant Suhail Khan who is on the board of the American Conservative Union.

Watch the Horowitz video.

And here at PJM is video from CPAC of Khan stating flatly that there is no Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. at PJM.

And here is a website with extensive evidence on ACU Board Member Suhail Khan’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood as a case study. It includes some excellent videos including Khan praising those Muslims who say they love death more than their adversaries love life, and stating that his father founded MSA and ISNA in the U.S. – also video of Suhail Khan accepting awards from Alamoudi and Sami Al Arian.

While very recent public opinion polling from Egypt is not currently available, a number of clear inferences about what is likely to happen can be drawn from prior surveys and prior election results.

The bottom line: there is at least a 50 percent chance, if not more, that a candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood or a party with a generally similar approach and orientation will win the next presidential election.

I draw this conclusion from a number of factors. First, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that support for the current regime is very limited to nonexistent. But the underlying structural issues present a more daunting challenge. Even before the fall of the Mubarak government, the Egyptian public was strongly aligned with fundamentalists and traditionalists, rather than modernizers who support a secular, pro-western tradition.

"The earliest defenders of Islam would defend their more numerous and better-equipped oppressors because the early Muslims loved death -- dying for the sake of almighty Allah -- more than the oppressors of Muslims loved life. This must be the case when we are fighting life's other battles."

I know I haven't asked a fair question. As Andrew McCarthy put it recently, "that leitmotif -- We love death more than you love life -- has been a staple of every jihadist from bin Laden through Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood killer."

He isn't kidding. In 2008, as McCarthy notes, the "Supreme Guide" of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Mahdi Akef, while praising Osama bin Laden, urged teaching young people "the principles of jihad so as to create mujahidin who love to die as much as others love to live." In 2004, the 3/11 bombers in Madrid left behind a tape saying, "We choose death, while you choose life." MEMRI's Steven Stalinsky...

You know that press release, I mean, story the News-Talal-Corp-owned Times of London broke and that the News-Talal-Corp-owned Fox News carried about Abdullah tellling Obama not to "humiiiate" Mubarak?

Get the feeling the papers were being used as media major domos of the "Kingdom"? The writing has an unusually, let's say, emphatic flair.

Here's Fox's anonymous report:

Saudi Arabia threatened to prop up embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak if the Obama administration tries to force a swift change of regime in Egypt The Times of London reported Thursday.

In a testy personal telephone call on Jan. 29, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah reportedly told President Obama not to humiliate Mubarak and warned that he would step in to bankroll Egypt if the U.S. withdrew its aid program, worth $1.5 billion annually.

America's closest ally in the Gulf made clear that the Egyptian president must be allowed to stay on to oversee the transition towards peaceful democracy and then leave...

In the latest Great Debate on the Right -- the "caliphate" Beck-oning in Egypt vs. Egypt Kristol-izing in the spirit of "1776" -- I'll take a front seat on Beck's side of the divide.

More to come, because this subject is more meaty than my flip intro suggests. In fact, watching the fragmentation between the "respectable" Right, as Robert Stacy McCain sarcastically styles it, and those the "respectable" Right and Left are glibly co-tarring as a lunatic fringe spearheaded by the popular and unbowed Beck, I see possible signs of a nascent conservative reckoning on the disastrous Bush drive to democractize the Islamic world as a response to jihad, or what Bushites regard as generic "terrorism" -- terrorism devoid of ideologicla and strategic roots in Islam. If this reckoning comes to pass, the movement will be a lot smarter and more prepared to fend off...

AP photo and caption: Afghans offer prayers over the coffin containing the body of Malam Awal Gul, an Afghan prisoner who died at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay Cuba last week, during his burial ceremony in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday.

Today, I am pleased to publish an interview with John Bernard, a retired Marine Corps First Sergeant and combat veteran who, since launching his blog Let Them Fight or Bring Them Home in 2009, has developed a large following for his perceptive insights into our current struggles. The interview is conducted by Paul Hair, a writer and veteran of the war in Iraq.

Unusually long and far-ranging, this interview examines many issues related to America's unusually long and far-ranging wars, now almost a decade old. The disastrousness of COIN theory, Bernard's take on Gens. Petraeus and McChrystal, changing the ROEs, pardoning the Leavenworth Ten, conservative hopes for Rep. Allen West, Islam, Christianity,"diversity" -- all and more are treated here in a extraordinarily thoughtful discussion.

The United States may scrap upcoming talks with Pakistan about the war in Afghanistan to further pressure Islamabad to free an American who shot dead two Pakistanis, U.S. officials said.

Let's hope.

Washington insists the detained American has diplomatic immunity and killed the Pakistanis in self-defense as they tried to rob him at gunpoint. It says the man's detention is illegal under international agreements covering diplomatic ties.

Pakistani leaders, facing a groundswell of popular anger triggered by the incident, have avoided definitive statements on the status of the American, whom they have named as Raymond Davis. Davis's next court appearance is set for Feb. 11.

Two senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Monday that talks involving Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S. set for Feb. 24 in Washington are now in doubt because of the spat. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity...

... Geert Wilders in back in court, as Dutch state minions continue to appease their Muslim and Marxian overlords.

Here is what he said.

The lights are going out all over Europe. All over the continent where our culture flourished and where man created freedom, prosperity and civilization. Everywhere the foundation of the West is under attack.
All over Europe the elites are acting as the protectors of an ideology that has been bent on destroying us for fourteen centuries. An ideology that has sprung from the desert and that can produce only deserts because it does not give people freedom. The Islamic Mozart, the Islamic Gerard Reve [a Dutch author], the Islamic Bill Gates; they do not exist because without freedom there is no creativity. The ideology of Islam is especially noted for killing and oppression and can only produce societies that are backward and impoverished. Surprisingly, the elites do not want to hear any criticism of this ideology.
My trial is not an isolated incident. Only...

A very important and related story from Patrick Goodenough at CNSNews.com reporting that Sherry Rahman, the brave lawmaker in Pakistan who introduced an amendment last November against the nation's blasphemy laws, has dropped her campaign.

As for our "pal" and major charity case, Prime Minister Gilani? Goodenough notes that Gilani "assured a gathering of Muslim leaders last month that the government has no plans to change the blasphemy laws. He subsequently disbanded a committee that had been established to determine how to amend the legislation."

So let's send over another load of US aid money. After all, Pakistan has only received $18 billion since 2001.

The CNSNews.com adds further detail to the whole story:

Her effort won the support of PPP colleague Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, who called late last year...

Five years ago, the story of Abdul Rahman, a Christian convert from Islam under prosecution for his faith in US-"liberated" Afghanistan, did not make the pages of the New York Times.

The Chicago Tribune reported the story in the most vivid terms (the lead prosecutor, the Trib reported, called Rahman "a microbe in society," who "should be cut off and removed from the rest of Muslim society and should be killed"), followed up by a smallish cohort including, among others, WND.com, ABC News, Michelle Malkin, and Yours Truly, in both columns and my book.

Rahman avoided the death penalty when the court ruled he was insane (only a fruitcake would become a Christian, right?) but he couldn't remain in the country and live, what with all the Afghan clerics (and his family) calling for his death, and his jailer, as the Trib reported, promising "we will cut him in little pieces," making a cutting motion with her hands. So, Rahman was spirited out of the country, as they say, in what I imagine was a giant diplomatic pouch, to live in anonymity in Italy. Which sounds to me like he came out of top.

But into the mounting paeons timed to mark his centennial today, I have to toss some clay if only to slow apotheosis, beatification or whatever celebratory conservatives starved for principled and patriotic politicians end up setting into motion. His fine and unmatched points were many, we were ridiculously lucky to get him, but there were a couple of failures on his watch that deeply plague us to this day.

1) Ronald Reagan let Iran's Hezbollah-aborning get away with every act of war against the United States. We usually call these acts " terrorism," but maybe that's a dodge, an excuse for inaction against paralyzing amorphousness. These acts included attacks on the US Embassy & Marine Barracks in Beirut; the kidnapping/torture murders...

Ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted to be here in Luton, the birthplace of the English Defence League.
Native Lutonians are living at Ground Zero of the attempted Islamic takeover of England. Your resistance is an inspiration to everyone in the European Counterjihad. It is a privilege to have been invited to this historic event.
As most of you know, I have been charged with hate speech in Austria, and my trial is currently underway.
What were the charges against me?
The original charge was “incitement to hatred”. On the second day of my trial, the judge at her own discretion added a second charge, “denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion.”
...

Last night, when I read Patrick Poole's first story at BigPeace about capitulation to Islamic narrative mastery at Virginia Military Institute in the form of an official conferenee CELEBRATING the Muslim conquest of Spain, I just couldn't bring myself to repost it, at least not right away. It was a geat story, an important story, but it was just too depressing. Even for me (which is saying something). It's that deep-tissue manipulation of history -- VMI's as much as pre-Reconquista Spain -- that hurt the most.

But the morning after is indeed another day. Patrick now is following up with some exciting news -- disarray in the VDI (see post title) leadership under relentless (I hope) assault from angry callers...

Americans must learn two concepts to better understand the political earthquake the United States is now pushing as President Obama gives his nod to "the Arab street," predominantly organized, it seems, by the Muslim Brotherhood, to force out an ally, Hosni Mubarak.

Many on the right have seen in the anti-Mubarak movement vindication of George W. Bush's Big Idea -- that ballot-box democracy would transform the umma into Jeffersonian, or, at least, pro-Western and anti-jihad republics. That this hasn't happened anywhere (and in spades) doesn't dampen their enthusiasm. In fact, citing Bush to bolster pro-"opposition" commentary is in vogue. Writing in the Washington Post, Elliott Abrams quotes Bush, circa 2003, as saying: "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? ... Are they alone never...

How about a photo-trip down sharia-memory lane? Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) on the hustings for then-Senate-candidate Al Franken in October 2008 with Somali sharia court enthusiast Abdullahi Ugas Farah.

----

The political atmosphere is toxic. I am not talking about the "heat" of the rhetoric the media love to wring their hands over, particularly when conservatives are making winning arguments. I mean the political atmosphere is toxic to the truth. Facts. Statements of fact. Just as once upon a half-century-plus ago, you couldn't talk about the communist conspiracy in America without a ton of media and elite bricks coming down on your head, today you can't talk about Islam, its tenets, its historical record, stated goals and agent-organizations without a similar avalanche of criticism.

Once, communists and fellow travelers had control -- in some cases literal, in others by dint of influence -- of the talking space; now, the Muslim message dominates. Or, should I say, the Muslim...

At Pajamas Media, David Solway asks a question I, too, have been pondering, and includes a nice mention of The Death of the Grown-Up:

And when Krauthammer proceeds to dismiss “Islamism” as merely “an ideology of a small minority,” he loses credibility, revealing a state of denial more plausibly associated with America’s coastal elites, public intellectuals, academic limpets, and media dilettantes like Paul Krugman, Peter Beinart, Thomas Friedman, David Remnick et al. Andrew Bostom takes Krauthammer roundly to task for his “fundamental ignorance of mainstream, classical Islamic Law” and for his “uninformed, incoherent musings on Geert Wilders and Islam.” Diana West, too, in The Death of the Grown-Up, castigates Krauthammer for going “all mushy on us,” passing off as “Islamist” what is plainly...

Raymond Allen Davis, 36, is currently under arrest in Pakistan for what he says was the self-defense shooting deaths of two Pakistani "motorcyclists" he believed intended to rob him in Lahore. A third Pakistani was killed by a consular vehicle rushing to assist Davis.

Davis, according to the US government, has diplomatic immunity and "Washington has stepped up calls for his release," whatever that means. So far, not much since Davis remains in a Pakistani jail, poor devil, while the families of the dead men have called for him to be tried as a terrorist in a demonstration near the scene of the shooting.

As for our fabulous ally, the Pakistani government, beneficiary of American billion$ in military and humanitarian aid: What is the official reaction?

The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.

Meanwhile, as this story races on, Aaron Klein at WND.com is now reporting that a senior Egyptian intel official says former US ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner met yesterday with a senior MB official inside the US Embassy in Cairo.

Back to the LA Times:

The organization must reject violence and recognize democratic goals if the U.S. is to be comfortable with it taking part in the government, the White House said. But by even setting conditions...

Fjordman writes in today with a story from Spiegel Online that notes the concerted efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood, jihad men of the hour, to look normal and non-threatening for benefit of the swooning world media. Spiegel begins by describing the MB crest, which, mirabile dictu, is suddenly nowhere to be seen in the MB's world headquarters!

A Koran, two crossed swords and a message: "Prepare yourselves." The crest of the Islamist Egyptian group Muslim Brotherhood is nothing if not martial. Perhaps even a bit too martial for the international press On the first floor of a shabby apartment building on El-Malek El-Saleh street in downtown Cairo, the group -- which for years has been Egypt's largest opposition movement -- is receiving a gaggle of scribes from abroad. And the official symbol is nowhere to be seen. Even verses from the Koran or photographs of the holy Kaaba in Mecca, of the kind that hang in living rooms across Egypt, are absent. Instead, visitors are confronted with desks...